THE BOTTLE OF WINE
Kingsley Amis hypothesized that writers drink more than most people because most people can achieve the effect of “becoming a slightly different person from your daytime self” simply by coming home from work every day. “Writers haven’t got that advantage,” Amis wrote. “When they finish work they’re at home already. So perhaps they need that glass of gin extra badly. Any excuse is better than none.”
These days, of course, we are all living the writer’s life, stuck working from home, with nowhere to go when we’re finished for the night. So perhaps that’s why we’re all drinking more in quarantine. We need a bottle of wine extra badly, if only to distinguish work from rest.
It’s never been easier to get good wine, shockingly. Across Ontario, local restaurants are opening their cellars to the public, hand-selecting interesting bottles and selling them online with meals or snacks to meet the requirements for legal alcohol delivery. Local wine merchants are curating cases to sell direct to customers, while establishments that have already made the switch from dine-in to takeout are offering house bottles as inexpensive add-ons to orders on Door Dash and Uber Eats.
It’s been one of the few precious effects of the coronavirus pandemic that feels like a net gain. If you can sell liquor ordinarily, you can now sell it to go.
This is a boon for restaurateurs, who otherwise have little recourse to earn during the time of social distancing measures. And it’s been a salve for everyone languishing at home in self-isolation, craving something fermented and delicious.
Maybe you would like to avail yourself of a six-bottle variety pack from Grape Witches, a wine merchant in Toronto that offers unique and thoughtful selections of low-intervention wines, along with light artisanal snacks and hand-written tasting notes. Or you could order a case from the Niagara region’s superb Pearl Morrissette, which has released its special Metis Rouge and Metis Blanc for quarantine at an extremely generous price. Last weekend, I ordered a crisp organic Riesling from Kew Vineyards to go with my chicken and cauliflower from Toronto’s Le Phenix. It was amazing, and no less exciting than the wine was the experience of having it delivered.